Church study reveals 11,000 cases of alleged abuse

A survey of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in the US has found that 4450 priests have been accused of sexually abusing 11,000 minors since 1950 - many more than previously estimated by the media, CNN reported.

Senior Catholic officials have warned for weeks that the study's findings could be "startling" if viewed in isolation.

While victims' groups say the numbers of victims and abusers are probably even higher, Catholic leaders say that no other large religious group, corporation or profession has conducted a similar self-examination.

"We're the only institution in the country that has done a study like this, so it's hard to compare," Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington said last week.

While CNN's report gave few details and no information on the financial cost of the scandal or the sex of the victims, it said there were 11,000 accusations of sexual abuse by priests, of which 6700 had been investigated and substantiated. Another 1000 were unsubstantiated. The remaining 3300 were not investigated because the accused priests had died.

The survey was commissioned by the National Review Board of prominent Catholic laypeople appointed by the bishops at the height of the clergy sex abuse scandal in 2002, and was conducted by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

It is based on information supplied by the bishops of almost all of the nation's 195 Catholic dioceses, where tens of thousands of priests have served since 1950.

The goal is to produce the first full accounting of the "nature and scope" of sex abuse in the church, including the number of accused priests; the number, age and sex of the alleged victims; and how much money the church has spent on legal fees, settlements and psychological counselling.

The survey is scheduled to be released on February 27 at a news conference in Washington. The same day, the National Review Board is due to release a report examining why sexual abuse persisted in the church and what factors are to blame.

The board's report, written by a committee chaired by a Washington lawyer, Robert Bennett, is based on interviews with more than 100 church officials, experts and victims.

"Neither the John Jay report nor the National Review Board reports are complete," Mr Bennett said. "They're a work in progress and people should wait until the 27th before drawing any conclusions about any of it."

David Clohessy, national director of the 4600-member Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said: "This is just a self-reported survey, not an independent study, much less a thorough investigation."

Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement on Monday: "These reports will be a very sobering and important milestone . . . I want to reaffirm that the bishops requested these studies so that we could understand as fully as possible what caused this terrible occurrence in the life of our community and to make sure that it never happens again."